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Monday, July 15, 2013

`That Was the Kind of Day It Was'

“Last
week, there was a day I hesitate to call perfect only because I’d hate it if
the truly perfect day had already come and gone in my life.”

Agreed,
but a day can be judged perfect only in memory. No one recognizes perfection as
it happens. The day’s aches and gripes and mundane contingencies distract from
emergent perfection. The perfect day must be seen, like fine jewelry, in the
appropriate setting – that is, among the more conventional days surrounding it.
Perfection, paradoxically, is relative. The quote above, Verlyn Klinkenborg’s,
from More Scenes from the Rural Life
(Princeton Architectural Press, 2013), is followed by this:

“I’d like
it to remain somewhere ahead in my reckoning. But when that perfect day comes
it will probably resemble the one last week. The western breeze had cleaned the
sun and purified the light, which fell mote-less on the farm.”

Note that
Klinkenborg doesn’t confuse the day’s perfection with wealth, conquest, love or
the grosser pleasures, perfection’s hackneyed attributes to the callow
unimaginative. For him a breeze and sunlight qualify. At the beach in Galveston
on Sunday, we had a hot wind that mitigated the humidity, and intermittent sun,
but the breeze was tangy with brine, the waves subdued, our fellow beach-goers
mostly quiet. They provided the scent of barbecue. The sand was buff-colored
and fine. We collected shells and beach glass and I pulled a dead horseshoe
crab from the water, holding it by the tail and chasing my ten-year-old,
pretending it was one of the face-huggers from the Alien movies.

My oldest
son was married last week in New York City. My middle son is attending a
computer camp with his best friend near Seattle, and in six weeks leaves for
boarding school in Canada. A perfect day is not getting what you want but appreciating
what you have. Klinkenborg writes:

“These are
pure-sun, western-breeze thoughts, steam rising from compost. But on the day
I mean, it seemed like a toss-up. Either everything was sentient along with me,
or we are all sharing a vital insentience. I sat in the shade watching the bees
come and go in the sunshine a few feet away, a nectared, pollened, purposeful
cloud. That was the kind of day it was.”